Skeleton has been in Olympic hibernation for 54 years, but its rebirth as a Winter Games sport will be anything but a snooze.
There’s nothing sleep-inducing about watching athletes zip face-first down a twisting trail of ice at 80 m.p.h., their chins an inch or two above the track, on what amounts to a fiberglass cookie sheet.
“This is going to be a blast,” U.S. Olympic trials champion Tristan Gale said. “People don’t know what they’re going to see when they come to a skeleton race.”
The men’s and women’s competition Wednesday at Utah Olympic Park also will feature third-generation Winter Olympian Jim Shea Jr., whose story has grabbed worldwide attention. His grandfather, Jack, who won two speedskating gold medals in the 1932 Games, died at 91 on Jan. 22 from injuries he sustained in an auto accident.
Shea Jr., who in 1999 became the first American to win the world championships, will carry his grandfather’s funeral card in his helmet during his two Olympic runs.
Several other U.S. competitors could extend American Olympic “dominance” in this sport. The U.S. won three of the six Olympic skeleton medals awarded in 1928 and 1948, the only two Games in which the sport was contested.
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Chris Soule, who has done acting and stunt work, finished second in the 2001-02 World Cup standings and won the circuit finale Jan. 17 in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Lincoln DeWitt slumped after winning the overall 2000-01 World Cup title, but the Park City resident knows his home track well.
The gold-medal favorite is Switzerland’s Gregor Stahli, who retired after the 1994 season but returned in 1999 when skeleton was made an Olympic sport. Stahli won four of the five races on the recent World Cup circuit.
Women’s skeleton is new to the Winter Games, and the race for the inaugural gold medal is wide open. Only 10 World Cup points separate circuit champion Alex Coomber of Britain from fourth-place Lea Ann Parsley of the U.S.
Parsley was second in the St. Moritz World Cup finale to Canada’s Michelle Kelly and excelled in training this week despite a tender hamstring.
“I could see everyone on the podium,” Shea Jr. said of his teammates’ medal chances. “I think they’re going to do really, really well.”